Ministers pressing Treasury to fund ‘a lot of prevention projects’

Public health minister Andrew Gwynne said “prevention is very much at the heart” of the department’s bids for Treasury funding for upcoming spending reviews, adding that “hopefully coming out of the spending review will be a lot of public health projects” and “the funding to follow”. 

Mr Gwynne, the MP for Gorton and Denton, is also “pushing for a real-terms increase in the public health grant”, the allocation to local councils for public health services, which has been repeatedly cut in real-terms since 2015. But on this point he added: “Let’s see where that lands.”

Speaking at a Health Devolution Commission event on Tuesday, Mr Gwynne said: “There’s a lot of work being done on the spending review… prevention is very much at the heart of the bids that we are putting together for the spending review.”

The Treasury is expected to fix budgets for 2025-26 at the end of October, but Mr Gwynne appeared to suggest the bids were focused on the multi-year public spending plans beyond 2025-26, which are due to be confirmed next spring.

He said the sector can be “rest assured” the three shifts described in Labour’s “health mission” – which include a move from “treatment to prevention” – are “going to happen”, and will be driven by “specific [spending review] bids” to the Treasury.

The other two are moving care from hospitals to primary and community care, and from “analogue to digital”.

Health and social care secretary Wes Streeting has continued to take a tough line on health spending – pointing out in a speech at a Health Foundation event on Wednesday that bids for health funding often claimed there would be a payback in future years which they could not deliver on.  

At the devolution event, Mr Gwynne also expanded on plans for stronger devolution to the 12 regions which currently have elected mayors, arguing combined authorities have “the right economies of scale” to take a greater role in prevention and public health.

He said: “Devolution – particularly devolution where there are metro mayors in those combined authorities – is going to be key because that is kind of the right level for a lot of what we want to do, particularly in the health area…

“We’re going to be asking a lot of local government and a lot of mayors and combined authorities to meet those ambitions that are set out in the mission.”